LOUIS IV

born 893, Alttting, Bavaria died Sept. 24, 911, Frankfurt byname Louis The Child, German Ludwig Das Kind East Frankish king, the last of the East Frankish Carolingians. During his reign the country was ravaged by frequent Magyar raids, and local magnates (the ancestors of the later ducal dynasties) brought Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia, and Saxony under their sway. A son of the East Frankish king Arnulf, Louis was declared heir to the kingdom in 897, and after Arnulf's death (899) was crowned king in 900. Later that year a party of Lotharingians, after defeating their king, Zwentibold (Louis' half brother), in an uprising, acknowledged Louis as their sovereign. Although in theory the boy king was himself the ruler, the government was, in fact, controlled by Archbishop Hatto I of Mainz. The kingdom was, however, too weak to check the raids of the Magyars, which became increasingly frequent after 900. In 910 they defeated a large royal army near Augsburg. Louis died the following year. born 921 died Sept. 10, 954, Reims, Fr. byname Louis D'outremer (Louis from Overseas) king of France from 936 to 954 who spent most of his reign struggling against his powerful vassal Hugh the Great. When Louis's father, Charles III the Simple, was imprisoned in 923, his mother, Eadgifu, daughter of the Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Elder, took Louis to England. He was recalled to France in 936 and crowned on June 19 at Laon by Artand, archbishop of Reims, who became Louis's chief supporter against Hugh the Great. Louis proved not to be the puppet monarch that Hugh had anticipated; he even moved from Paris to Laon to avoid Hugh's influence. When Hugh and Herbert of Vermandois seized Reims and attacked Laon in 940, Louis valiantly defended his city; but because of Louis's earlier interference in Lorraine the German king, Otto I, sent aid to the rebels. Louis appeared to be totally defeated in 941, but he made peace with Otto in November 942 at Vise on the Meuse, and Hugh and he were reconciled after Herbert, Hugh's chief supporter, died in 943. In 945, while intervening in Norman politics, Louis was captured and handed over to Hugh, who imprisoned him for a year. On his release, Louis closely allied himself with Otto to retake Reims in 946. In 949 Louis again received control of Laon, and Hugh, excommunicated by French and German synods and by the Pope, made a peace in 951 that lasted until Louis's death. born 1283?, Munich died Oct. 11, 1347, Munich byname Louis The Bavarian, German Ludwig Der Bayrisch duke of upper Bavaria (from 1294) and of united Bavaria (134047), German king (from 1314), and Holy Roman emperor (132847), first of the Wittelsbach line of German emperors. His reign was marked by incessant diplomatic and military struggles to defend the right of the empire to elect an emperor independently of the papacy, to consolidate his own position, and to improve the status of his family. Additional reading Important summaries reflecting modern research are given by Herbert Grundmann, Der Kampf um das Reichsrecht unter Ludwig dem Bayern, in Bruno Gebhardt, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, 9th ed., vol. 1, pp. 518554 (1970); and on Louis IV as ruler, in articles by Max Spindler and Heinz Angermeier in the Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte, ed. by Spindler, vol. 2, pp. 104137, 144181 (1969), both with bibliographies. An important work in English is W.T. Waugh, Lewis the Bavarian, Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 7, ch. 4 (1932).